The Sims 5 Won't Happen If The Sims 4 Doesn't Sell, Says Producer

Fans, gamers and fanatics of The Sims had an opportunity to volley some questions off The Sims 4 producer, Grant Rodiek. One of the users made a list of things they would love to see in The Sims 5, but Rodiek quickly shot down any possibility of a sequel at the moment.

Over on The Sims forums, users tossed questions at Rodiek and Rodiek responded (using the handle SimGuruGrant). After someone made a lengthy list of things worth seeing in the sequel, Grant stated the following...

“We're not working on Sims 5. We're not thinking about Sims 5. If Sims 4 isn't successful, there won't be a Sims 5.”

It's unlikely that The Sims 4 will end up a flop, as fans of the series don't really have a choice in other life-simulators. People who know of The Sims but don't know about what features it's missing or some of the controversy surrounding some of the changes implemented into the game, will likely just pick up a copy because it's the new hotness.

Additionally, EA and Maxis are likely to have a ton of expansion packs, microtransactions or DLC bundles setup for the game, so even if they don't make money on the title up front it's likely they'll make money off the tail-end through add-ons.

Funnily enough, a few users were a bit irritated at Grant's presence in the forum, as they felt he was just there to sell the game, to which Grant responded, writing...

“Sigh. For one, we just recently launched this new forum. Secondly, before the game launched I wasn't able to discuss everything as openly as I'm able to do now.

“I'm here, with others, to support the community. You guys have feedback, bugs, concerns, and we're here to answer and address those. Of course we're trying to sell copies -- that's how we keep our job. But, I'm not here dropping sales links and such. Hopefully me being here improves your feelings towards the game. If it doesn't? That's fine too, (gulp), but I'm not doing anything nefarious here.”

It's a fine line, it really is. Grant's basically trying to keep the peace and maintain stability where a bunch of people may be expressing discontent with the game.

This kind of issue has been regularly cropping up with Electronic Arts games, as there are oftentimes decisions made for some of the titles that pushes their audience further away as opposed to reeling them in. Sort of like with Mass Effect 3's stronger lean toward a third-person shooter than a more traditional RPG like the first game. EA and Maxis also came under fire for SimCity, where a lot of features and the always-on DRM prevented gamers from enjoying the game as they saw fit.

At the end of the day, it's unlikely that The Sims 4 will be a flop. It may suffer stiff sales during this quarter (and maybe the next quarter) but over the course of time it's possible the game would likely pick up sales as more patches and fixes roll out and the game receives more expansion packs and add-ons.